Mapeamento Semântico entre Linhas do Pensamento Computacional e Mecânicas de Jogos Sérios: um estudo de caso para a Decomposição

Abstract

The second decade of the 21st century highlighted society’s growing technological dependence, driven by the explosion of Artificial Intelligence and the COVID-19 pandemic, which shifted many in-person activities to the remote environment. This new reality requires traditional education to adapt to the needs of Digital Natives (DN), who do not respond well to conventional pedagogical practices. Education for the future must prepare citizens to solve problems in ways that can be executed by computers, developing Computational Thinking (CT). Part of the addition to the Common National Curriculum Base (BNCC), this skill is essential to prepare students for the job market and an increasingly digital society. Problem-solving is a 21st-century skill, which includes creativity, communication, literacy in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), collaboration, conflict management, flexibility, and critical thinking. Wing’s concept of CT includes skills such as abstraction, decomposition, and algorithmic thinking, applicable across various fields of knowledge. However, there is a conflict between the teaching methods of Digital Immigrants, who grew up before the digital era, and the expectations of DN, accustomed to a connected and multitasking lifestyle. To overcome this challenge, the application of Serious Games (SG) is a promising approach. SG can develop 21st-century skills, offering opportunities for active learning and engaging DN. The use of games to develop CT is still underexplored, but mapping their mechanics could be a valuable resource. This research presents a semantic mapping between serious game mechanics and CT strands, highlighting the importance of going beyond teaching algorithms and programming to fully develop CT in students. Differentiating itself from other works on this topic, this study presents a semantic mapping between serious game mechanics and CT strands. The study proposes an approach to integrate Computational Thinking (CT) concepts with the "Learning Mechanics – Game Mechanics" (LM-GM) framework by Lim et al. (2013), aiming to understand how game design can be used to develop students’ computational thinking skills. To achieve this goal, the steps include defining relevant CT concepts, selecting game mechanics that promote CT development, mapping semantic relationships between game mechanics and CT strands, identifying interactions between these concepts in the context of serious games, and collecting and analyzing data on students’ experience with these mechanics. The methodology followed three stages: a literature review for theoretical grounding, development of an adapted framework, and application in a case study with students, evaluating how game mechanics relate to CT development. The results indicate that the mechanics Behavioral Momentum, Tile-Based Movement, and Role Playing can enhance skills such as composing, integrating, interfacing, and inter-relating, which are part of the decomposition strand.